EL CID Spanish Restaurant    EL CID西班牙餐廳  

It was my first time to come here. i went there with one of my friends.
We sat inside the restaurant (near the Kitchen).
If you don't want to hear the band music, don't sit there because it is quite noisy.
Ok..Let's talk about the food.
I ordered one tapas which was the mussels with white wine.
It was not that good because the size of mussels was small and it looked like clams.
The taste is not that good either. It costs $180 and totally not worth!
And for the main course, we ordered the seafood rice with squid ink sauce. It costs $400 for 2 people to eat.It was quite expensive but its taste was betten than the mussels. There are the mussels, prawns, fish and squids as the ingredients.

For the drinks, we ordered the Sangria($88) and Mojito ($98). I thought these were the best in the whole meal. Worth a try!

Anyway, i may not try this again. Because the price do not match with the taste of the food. The taste is fair too.

I'm rating this restaurant excellent because I will definitely come again. The food was good (some very good, some average dishes), service was attentive and polite and friendly, the place and people were not pretentious.. and a surprise end after our meal.. read on

Haven't had such great service from restaurant staff in HK for so long. It was Sat night and just after the Rugby 7's, though I don't think that had much to do with the increasing crowd during the night.

We didn't book but they happened to have one last table outside which we took. The staff were attentive and very polite, particularly the maitre d', called Hugo.

Food was a mix of good and average dishes. The stand out would have to be their tenderloin, which was cooked perfectly to medium rare. Very tender and you could see the juices coming out of it.

The surprise came at the end when we ordered a creme catalun, one of my all time favs. It arrived looking nice as it should, and the top cracked as required. But when I ate the creme it was too eggy! Way too eggy and 'cakey', not creamy at all. For you creme fans, it's one of the pet dislikes. I was disappointed to end the good night with a bad dessert but oh well, I told the waiter (maitre d') that I wanted to cancel it becos it was bad. Her response? "Absolutely not a problem. However can you tell me what's wrong with it?"

Wow I did not expect this type of service from this restaurant!

So after I told her she nodded in acknowledgement and went to get our requested bill. While we were waiting, a few min later she came back and put another new dish of creme in front of me. Confused, did they get it wrong? But then she said "After you told me what was wrong, I immediately went to tell our kitchen. I also tasted the one you had and what we supposedly normally serve. Please have this one, you will be much happier with it. We don't want you leaving with a bad impression of the restaurant." Wow.

So yes I ate it, and the new creme was much better.

Thank you so much for an enjoyable evening.

I brought my girlfriend to this restaurant hoping it would be as good at the one in Stanley - HOW wrong we were!

We had 3 different waitstaff serving us and this just seemed to confuse things. Our spicy chicken soup arrived as Gaspatcho, our Chorizo with apple arrived as uncooked lamb chops. Our Linguine with crabmeat & a (raw) egg arrived before the starter of spicy chicken soup. We sent it back, wanting to enjoy the soup first. Next, BOTH the Linguine AND the soup arrived at the same time!

We complained to the manager who simply said 'sorry' and then sent us a couple of apple schnaps, in the middle of our dinner, but I never got the feeling he was in any way actually sorry and it felt like this was something that happens a lot there.

I will not be coming back here EVER.

This restaurant is a HKD250 a main course joint and our bill was HKD800 for 2 without wine. At that price, I expect MUCH better service than this!

We had 20 people and booked this resturant for lunch on one Saturday. 16 people arrived about time and start the lunch. We have 4 person coming a bit late like 30 mins. The manager / waiter of the resturant keep asking us if those 4 people will be arriving or not. We told them they will arrive in 10 mins but the manager said they need to release our table to the other customer.

This kind of service is extremely frustrating. We have already had 16 people arrived and already told them the last 4 are on the way. And the manager was so unfriendly that we thought they would like to drive all of us all from the resturant. I don't think the manager seems to want us to come again and the 20 of us will not want to go to this resturant again.

Very unhappy experience!

Unexpectedly good. So surprise with the food quality. We ordered many dishes. 90% of them are delicious at a very reasonable price.

The drink Sangria taste good but a bit expensive. $260 / jar can only serve 5 glasses. We have 8 people and therefore we ordered two jars.

The food are far more value for money than the drinks. We ordered a number of tapas and main dish.

1. Suckling Pig (highly recommend)
Need to order in advance. Very crispy skin and juicy meat. Deep-fried diced potato on side very tasty too. Only $190 with 6 big pcs. Great!2. Ham & Cheese on Toast ($60 with 4 pcs, very good price)
Toast was crunchy, ham and cheese on top together with the toast is perfect. A very good appetizer. 3. Mushroom with Ox Tongue ($60 with 5 pcs, good portion)
This one a bit oily. Eat with the salad underneath is better.

The El Cid resturant in Knutsford Terrace makes a good attempt at Spanish food. The atmosphere is relaxed and we enjoyed a pleasant evening on the outside terrace.

We arrived for an early meal so the resturant was quite quiet, we were seat outside beneath a warm outdoor heater on the terrace at the front of the resturant. The waitress showed us through the menu, indicating the house specials and personal recommendations.

We ordered two tapas dishes to begin with, garlic bread with tomatoes and marinated tomatoes with olives. Both these were simple but enjoyable dishes. The garlic bread was well toasted and oiled but not overpowering. The tomatoes were still juicy and on the vine but had taken on a sweet, garlicy taste from the marinad. We were also served bread and balsamic vinegar, which went beautifully with the tomatoes. We followed these dishes by sharing the chicken, sausage and seafood paella, a dish recommended by the waitress. The paella turned out to be very tasty. The chorizo sausage had been allowed to enfuse the rice making it rich and flavoursome. The dish was topped with four very large spilt king pawns which were beautifully cooked. Somewhat surprisingly it was also topped with steamed brocolli and colliflower, something we have never come across before and something which didn't really go with the dish. The paella was brought out to the table straight from the oven in its piping hot dish. This was a nice authentic spanish touch and allowed us to enjoy the sticky thicken rice at the bottom of the dish. Although we initally thought it small when it arrived at the table it was a good portion to leave two of us satisfied. Overall we were very satisfied with the food, other than the strange vegtable addition. It is simple food but well cooked and tasty using fresh ingredients. The meal was a little expensive but our overall cost included several beers.

The service was attentive and heplful although sometimes a little erratic. The knives and forks we used for the starters for example were placed straight back onto the table when the plates were cleared so we could reuse them for our main.

Overall a nice experience. Probably not the best Spanish food avaliable but a pleasant place to enjoy a meal.

went there as my friend's b'day. we ordered a few tap<div id="FB_HiddenContainer" style="position:absolute; top:-10000px; left:-10000px; width:0px; height:0px;" ></div>as including suasages, mushrooms, meatballs and garlic prawns. they were so so but the sausages are very salty. We ordered a seafood n chicken paella for main, that's the worst I've ever had! it doesn't taste like paella at all! we could only finish half of it and head off to 甜蜜蜜 for dessert. We tried the sangria and it was awesome, it has a strong wine taste and very fruity. we paid $1000 for such quality for 4ppl which I would say is a rip off.

Had dinner with my bf and some friends there. The appetisers were quite ok but the main wasn't as tasty as I thought.
The 4 of us ordered:-
Green salad > dressing was quite fresh
Calamari > very tasty but very small portion too for the price
Escargot with mashed potato >> not bad
Spanish nachos > quite surprised, their nachos are made of deep fried fish skin and it tastes surprisingly nice, but you must eat it very quickly before it goes soft.
We also ordered two mains
Spanish Suckling Pig > although the skin was very crispy but it was too meaty and fatty. The chinese suckling pig is a lot nicer.
Spanish seafood fried rice > the 4 king prawns are very nice. However, the rice itself is nothing special, not enough sauce and seasoning. They charge a higher price than many other Spanish restaurants.
The drinks we had were rather nice. We ordered a Fiesta Sunset and a jar of Sangria, very fresh and fruity.
Overall, the atmosphere was quite relaxing as we sat outside.

prawn and seafood rice ($280 for two): i think the prawn and seafood rice ($320) in squid ink that i tried last time tastes much better.

garlic bread with tomato sauce : quite good

spinach and cheese pastry : my favourite

salmon pastry : $60 for five very small pieces. tastes ok but too expensive.

$475 for three people. not very full.

there is no non-smoking area. my throat felt very comfortable. there were quite many ppl smoking

five ppl had dinner tonight.
grilled seafood $220: two big shrimps, cuttlefish ring, mussels,sandine ....all are fresh and tasty.

large shrimp and seafood squid ink rice $320: quite large,there are four large shrimps, mussels... on the squid ink rice. many many fish, squid, calm are mixed in the rice but you cannot see it because all are dark.the rice is not too soft. the texture and taste is good.

duck linguine $120: only two little pieces of duck. little pasta. but quite many mushroom. the sauce is special and tasty.

tapas:
spinach and cheese roll: not good. too little spinach and cheese.

romaine salad with red pepper and almond sauce: the salad sauce is quite good.

calm in white wine: excellant

spinach ham with melon: not special.

creme burlee $50 and blueberry pie with vanila ice-cream $50. just so so.

environment is quite noisy

I like El Cid since 2001, the environment is beautiful and comfortable, food is great! I like the set lunch, tea time set and set dinner the best, the tapa and paellais excellent, I think Raul must like El cid, I must go there again!gracias.

pretty good food, nice place... the highlight will be the live band, if you are going for a romantic dinner. they have a backyard which is excellent for a large group gathering... thumbs up.

Nothing to say! Go with your friends, choose your favourite tapas from a great variety and get a beer. You will enjoy life here!

El Cid has now evolved to a restaurant chain and the standard of the food is somewhat shifted downwards. Nevertheless, Spanish dishes are still interesting. Tapas are equivalence to chinese dim-sum and can be treated as a meal without the main course. Yet paella (rice in wok) will then be a miss.